Read Books

Karl is an excellent author, making things easy to understand and follow. When you read his work, you can hear him speaking to you, he writes very much the way he speaks.

I only read selective chapters of this book, but I got from it what I expected to learn. In those sections he addressed issues relative to writing. Everything form organization, topic selection, editing and publishing. The rest of the book may yet be beconing to me.

Transformation is a fantasy novel about the relationship between a contemptuous and overbearing prince, Aleksander, on his way to becoming emperor, and his slave, Seyonne. The story is told from the Seyonne’s point of view.

Carol slowly builds the character of Seyonne. At the start of the book, he lives solely in the present, his past repressed or forgotten, the future irrelevant. It becomes apparent that he has some special abilities to recognize or see things others cannot. His magic was taken from him in a ritual when he was captured. He had been a Warden, a man with some magical abilities skilled at fighting demons.

The early story of the slave is very graphic and, for me, difficult to read. It deals with punishment, his attitude on survival and his slave past. At the same time, Aleksander sees him only as property and a tool. He things nothing of withholding food or punishing Seyonne.

Once he starts seeing things, his tie to Aleksander become stronger and their relationship really starts to develop. At this point I found the book quite compelling and easy to read.

The characters are very interesting and the story is well-told. Carol Berg has created an interesting world with full cultures that interact with the characters to help make this a fascinating story.

This is the story of Han Solo prior to the movie saga. It start with his life on Corellia. It goes through his first encounters with Chewbacca and Lando, getting into his smuggling career and his acquisition of the Millennium Falcon.

The book is an action story. Han goes from one event to another. Parts of the book really bothered me, character actions didn’t seem quite right, some events seemed to be just plot points. Some of Han’s schemes didn’t seem quite reasonable, even if they failed, it seems he could come up with a better bluff or idea. It wasn’t particularly bad, it just should have been a lot more.